Hellboy 2: The Golden Army sort of
by Helena Valentine
Summary: Alright, full summery of what this is on the inside first chapter...
1. Note from HValentine

Ok, this is just a short note from the writer, so if you want to you can skip this and go to the first chapter, you can do so. I'm going to explain why I'm writing this and what it is, just to clear things up.

Alright. Over the past few weeks, I have been looking forward to about 9 things that will happen summer, 2008. That's not that far away, but I still hate waiting. So I decided the best way to deal with my inpatients was to choose one of the things (all of them are either books or movies) and simply write some fanfiction about what I think is going to happen next, since writing fanfiction is fun. So here it is, based off of scattered facts I found about it after about a whole hour of looking at google search results of "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army." I give you, a (hopefully) crappier version of what Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is going to be like! By the way, this does not count as a spoiler since most of the stuff I'm not even sure about and all of it except a few things I'm not going to say unless someone asks me are made up. Like, for instance, how Prince and Princess look. They do however, exist in the new movie.

Alright, read on. And I might not be able to update that much because I'm kind of busy, but I'm trying for about once a week.


	2. Silverlance

Writer: I give you, the first chapter of the fake HB2!

Disclaimer: The characters and a lot of the plot are not mine. The writing style and a lot of the plot is, however. And some of the character's personalities. (Don't sue me, please!)

The teenage boy turned his face, his pale blue eyes staring out into the darkness of the wood past the gnarled roots. The shadowed form in front of him shifted, and for a moment, a sparkle of a gem glinted on his forehead.

The Older boy spoke then, in a language that was foreign. His words were understood however, by the shadowed man in the doorway.

"_You really plan on doing this, Silverlance? You plan on going against everything your father ever worked for, everything all your ancestors have worked to keep?"_

"_Yes. I wish you could understand, Changeling. What I am doing is for the good of my people. Sacrifices must be made to build the new world. Humans are not accepting enough to let us live in peace. What we believe is that the Gods will get us through, help us to survive. But there are not gods who have created these beings. To bring us forwards, they must die." _The shadowed man answered in the same tongue. In any language however, you could hear the malice tasted on his own lips. He believed everything he was doing. He had a firm grasp on what he thought was right, the kind of knowledge of what he wanted that many people wished for.

"_What about your sister? I thought you loved her. She doesn't want this."_ The older boy, the changeling questioned. He had turned his head away completely now, not even facing Silverlance.

The shadowed man let out a huff of cruel laughter. _"Yes, I love her Changeling. Believe it or not, I love her more then you do. Which is why I'm doing this."_ His tone changed from mocking laughter to determination. An unseen fist clenched at his side, pitch black, much too long fingers clutching at his palm, making small half moons in the skin.

"_Changeling, I wish you could understand. I know that you can't, being a human yourself..."_ he whispered the last part, and the changeling spun, his eyes suddenly livid. _"So I'm going to explain it to you in the best way I can, in a way I think you will understand. You ask me what of my sister. My sister is a small thing who is not as brave as she tries to make herself out to be. Don't you remember when she was so young, and we brought her back from the human world with iron burns on her arms, burns from the humans who stuck the metal through her; who kept her in a cage! To them, we are animals. To them, Nuala was an animal, and always will be. But she is too compassionate. She refuses to blame them for their tremendous mistake of laying a finger on the Princess of the Fantastics... this is the only reason why she has run away with the last piece... and to make sure she remains safe, she must be hunted down._

The Changeling gripped his own palms with his own paler, shorter fingers. He remembered Silverlance's sister, so small at the time, being brought back from the world above with the black burns across her lovely pale skin. He remembered the terror in her beautiful darting eyes. He remembered hearing her screaming in her sleep from the servants quarters down the hall. And he remembered promising her, all this time later, he would not go over to Nuada's; Silverlance's; side. That her twin brother was wrong.

"_She's blocking me you know." _Silverlance whispered. _"I can hardly feel her in my mind any more. If she gets much better at shutting my mind out, I won't even be able to tell if she's alive or dead."_

For a moment, the Changeling felt terror go through him. Then he quickly calmed himself down as logic came. He turned to face Silverlance. _"Prince Nuada,"_ he said, earning an angry hiss from his master and childhood friend as he used Silverlance's old name. _"You would know if your sister Nuala was dead. But she will not die. She is on the right side, not you. I wish that __you__ would understand."_

He expected the Prince to pounce on him, but it still brought shock as the creature whipped itself out from the shadows of the wooden arched doorway. He felt a cold, long fingered hand on his mouth as he looked up at Silverlance, no, at Nuada. Nuada had changed so much. His hair was gone, his pure ebony colored skin had an ashen look to it, as though it were dying. His pale purple eyes, so like his sister's but without the warmth, bore into the Changeling's own eyes. Pointed ears came up on either side of the sinister face.

This time, the Prince spoke in English, the accent still heavy through the words. "So you will not scream..." He whispered, and he pulled his hand away. The Changeling's eyes grew wide, as though he were howling, terrified, but no sound came out. There was no place for sound to come out. Where his mouth had been was a pale stretch of flesh, as Nuada drew his hand away from the jaw. He kissed the brow of the mouthless human almost like a parent putting their child to sleep, and the Changeling went limp in his arms, though his eyes still looked on, terrified. "I think it is time you go back to your own world, Luis."


	3. BPRD

"I F'n told you to shut up and leave me alone!"

There was a sudden spark of light. Liz Sherman was quite litterally spitting fire with her words.

"Well you can't just get up and leave again! You said you would stay here! You promised it!" Hellboy shouted angrily. His steps sounded like barrels on the concrete ground. Precariously in between the two, Aberham Sapiens paged through his book, a rather bored expression on his face.

"I'm going to visit friends! I'm aloud to do that, right! And stop saying 'You promised!' You sound like a two year old. Shit, I am so sick of you whining and shouting." Liz yelled.

"Who the hell makes 'friends' in a mental hospital! They're crazy people! They might not even remember you!"

"Yeah, well if their crazy, I'm crazy too! And the people who make friends with them are the same ones who date friggin demons!" Liz shouted back. This time, a small flame of blue actually shot from her mouth instead of the sparks from before.

Abe quickly shut his book and backed away, walking again, this time next to Tom Manning, who glanced at him before saying "Well, this is going to last."

Abe raised an 'eyebrow' at the man. "They just have... issues. In general, not with each other."

Hellboy said something in a taunting manner and Liz let out a howl of suppressed rage, her foot stomping down on the pavement and leaving a black burning footprint of her shoe. Tom and Abe stepped around it as though it were something that happened every day.

"Ok, maybe they also have issues with each other, but they would have issues with anybody. So this is good." He said, loyally defending his sometimes seemingly hopeless friends.

Manning simply snorted.

Tom Manning had come a long way since Broom's death, and especially Hellboy saving him. For a while after that, he had even tried to be friendly to Hellboy, before realizing he more hated him for his personality rather then for his own prejudices. Then he had moved on to Liz, who had hated Manning for his personality as well as her and his old prejudices. Finally, he had come to Abe, who he admitted (though not out loud, not that it mattered to Abe) had terrified Manning. Now however, he seemed to be more comfortable with the creatures around him. It was as though fighting a dead man who ran on clocks, being saved by a demon, and especially Professor Broom's death, had made this life seem more normal, somehow. He didn't understand quite how that worked, however.

Abe saw Manning open his mouth, slightly glaring at the fighting odd couple in front of them, but Abe lifted a hand quickly, shaking his head. "Don't even try. Trust me, no good will come of it to any of you."

"If Liz flares up while we're walking in this alleyway, I'm pretty sure the people inside the building will notice the big waving blue fire." He said sarcastically. Abe simply looked up at where Manning was staring, at the rows of bleary windows they were passing by on their way to the auction house on the corner of the street. There had been a crowd of people on the road in front of the house since news of what had seemingly just conspired there had spread fast, and Manning was afraid the garbage truck was beginning to look too suspicious to some people, magically showing up to pick up the garbage whenever there was some unexplained trouble.

"It's getting harder to hide you all you know. What with all these people who believe in _The Loch Ness_, when there's not even any evidence of that, and here there's all these blurry pictures of a guy with a tail and horns running around, and about a thousand witnesses. It's amazing their not teaching children about you all in schools by now. God, it's all gonna go down the drain. That's what I keep thinking about, I just know someone's gonna take a live camera shot or a non-digital picture, and then it'll be over." Manning got out a cigar as he was thinking. He didn't notice Abe taking a few steps away. Abe wondered vaguely why everyone he knew just had to smoke all the time. He definitely didn't understand any of the charm they seemed to think it had. He vaguely reached up and adjusted the new reseptor he had gotten last week. The thing was definitely preferred over the small tank he had been wearing around his neck, and worked just as well, but made him look vaguely like he was wearing some kind of blue bejeweled necklace. Not that he had ever cared about things like that, he had figured a long time ago that if he cared what he looked like, it wouldn't really make him feel better about his life.

"Well," he said with an air of pointing out the obvious. "You don't have to hide us." He said.

Manning turned to look at him like Abe had just said maybe it would be fun to jump off a building. "Do you even-"

"Hey!" Hellboy suddenly yelled. His stone hand had lifted, waving back to them. "Can you two stop yappin', we're there already." Liz rolled her eyes, the anger from the argument previously obviously still fuming in her head.

Manning growled slightly, but Abe ignored him, walking past Hellboy into the building.

Hellboy looked down at Liz. She had her head purposefully turned away from him. Through the obvious feeling of being a bit pissed off at her, he felt an odd wave of guilt that only she had ever been able to really make him feel, if he didn't count Abe once when he had used reverse psychology on him, and of course, father...

Hellboy felt himself wince without meaning to, reminding himself of the task in front of him. He didn't like to think about his dad if he could help it. It didn't matter if he did, anyway. No amount of thinking about him was ever going to bring him back...

"Ok, what little ghosty or ghooly popped up here?" Hellboy yelled when he entered the auction house, before freezing on the spot next to Abe. He heard a few of the people there who hadn't seen them before gasp as they came in, but he hardly noticed it.

The entire auction hall was covered in vines, great rocks fallen down in chunks from the ceiling, letting the cool night air into the room. The building looked as though it had been fast-forwarded a thousand years, the inside of it not fitting at all with the modern, sleek metallic and mirrored glass outside. The vines seemed to come from a single spot on the floor, where it had been split open from beneath, splinters and a broken pipe sticking up like stalactites of a cave. Thorns grew sharp as needles from the black flesh of the plants, along with withered dark purple leaves. Smaller tendrils of the vines wove around the toppled chairs in the auctioning audience place, as though they had gripped at the people in them.

"What the hell happened?" Liz asked, looking around, her eyes wide.

Almost immediately, a short, balding man stepped forwards. He had a mustache that curled on the edges, like one of the rich nobles of a time long ago. "Well, miss. I witnessed the whole thing, I'm the auctioneer you see, but it's kind of hard to explain... we have a video though." The man said, in an oddly childish voice that did not fit his personality.

"Yes... I'll see the video first..." Abe said slowly. His dark, gold flecked eyes were staring fixedly at a single spot across the room in front of the auctioning stand, a small frown on his face. Hellboy frowned at Abe, walking to the back of the room where a small group of people were attaching a television camera to a small black and white television. The owner of the camera was staring fixedly at all of them, his mouth half open.

A short woman with freckles stood there, glanced up at them and then quickly looked away, attaching a wire to the back of the TV and pressing a button on the camera.

The image jumped to life on the television screen. She pressed another button on the camera, and the image fast forwarded, the small figures in the auction zooming on and off the screen, putting items on a and taking items off. The people in the audience moving their cards up and down looked like they were doing the wave. Finally, she pressed another button. The image zoomed backwards for a moment before playing.

"Sold, to number 31, for $300! Alright, moving on to our last item folks, this one excites me a lot, let me tell you." The auctioneer said. While he was auctioning off items, his voice seemed to drop two levels of sound, sounding deep and professional now. "A great item for all you fans of folklore. What we have here is a piece of a crown from ages before any of our times. Processionals have not been able to pin-point an exact time it was made, but let me tell you the obvious from looking at it folks: it's old."

There were collective chuckles amounst the audience, which transformed into oos and ahs as the same freckled woman who had set up the TV walked on with a small wheeling table. On it was a small, glittering thing unable to be clearly seen on the black and white television.

"Is anyone here ever heard the legend of the Fantastics?" The auctioneer said. He seemed to almost whisper the last word, and the audience, captivated, looked onward. One elderly man near the back rose his grey head, staring onwards with hardly suppressed interest.

"There was a story a long time ago about a race of people that controlled an army made of shining gold. They ruled as the kings of this heavenly army by means of a crown, made of petrified wood in thin woven sticks and three gems. The crown itself was supposed to symbolize the four elements: the branches were earth, and the gems each symbolized an element on their own. There was a ruby for fire, a diamond for air, and in the center, a single pearl for water."

Not a single person in the entire audience moved a mussel as they stared at the crown. The man in the back was rigid.

"The story goes that when man came to this earth, the race of people made them their slaves. Man wanted to be free though, so one man stole the crown right off the kings head, controlling the Golden Army to go against it's past rulers. The race of people were driven away, where, no one knows. But the King stepped forwards, leaving his wife and child who he had told to flee, and walked through the army of gold to the one human. He took the crown from the man's head, and spoke these words: 'I see now this power is too dangerous for any of us to have, for on both sides there was pain. Power of this magnitude is not meant for life of any kind, so no life will have it again." With that, the King broke the woven crown into three pieces. Two he put in his family, to be passed down always to the first two born of his royal lineage, so they can always protect the world. The last he placed up here, in the human world, the element of fire put in the human world, part of the crown of the Fantastics. And on the back of this crown, ladies and gentleman..." The auctioneer breathed. "Are the first letters of the word: F, A, and N. Now, there's a good chance this isn't the crown folks." The audience laughed, the spell broken. "But still a magnificent copy, and enough to get the folklorists and historians going crazy, so can I hear one thousand dollars for this priceless-"

"SILVERLANCE!!" The man in the back of the audience had suddenly leapt up, shouting. Liz let out a slight gasp. He had been wearing a long coat draped over his shoulders, and a hat shadowing his eyes. When he leapt up though, the coat and hat fell to the floor. Even in black and white, his skin was unnaturally pale compared to the rest of the audience. His teeth appeared to be black, and too full when he opened his mouth. The strangest thing however was the wings protruding from his back, or what used to be wings. The looked like oversized dragon fly wings with all the clear windows in between the veins ripped out. The veins still twitched on his back, slight light from small filaments left over on the edges of the veins reflecting in the picture.

Suddenly, the speakers filled with the ripping sound of screams. The people at the auction leapt up, running away, some simply sat still, eyes wide with terror and still as statue, frozen with shear fear.

It was like watching a tree grow in speeded up motion, bursting from the ground the vines shot into the air first, black branches waving like boneless arms, thorns cutting through the air, gleaming on the screen like razors.

A gargantuan ball of vines rose as though the ground was choking it up. The tendrils unraveled like yarn, opening flower-like in the center. Where the seeds would be however, were two figures. One was a huge, writhing thing. The creature held his palms on the ground where he stood, like an ape, and the long grey gnarled feet were backwards, toes pointing uselessly upwards in twists that made them look broken. The head was oversized, the chin protruding like a bull-dog's. Vastly oversized lower incisors jutted crookedly up over his bat-like leaf nose, dark eyes staring blearily out, unblinking. An old dirty loin cloth was wrapped around the creature, and scales glittered down it's back when it turned.

The other figure, though not nearly as noticeable, seemed to gain control of every eye watching the scene. He was tall and lean, wearing a short dark robe as a shirt, a glint of pale metal chain mail hanging elegantly from his shoulders. He wore black pants, tucked into tied on boots of leather wound up to his knees. A cape flowed behind him as though it had been woven from water, billowing in the slightest of winds. He wore a mask that was held on his face by a cloth going back over his unseen head, large spikes protruding from it like a porcupine. The mask itself seemed to be molded of mirrors, reflecting the scene in front of him as he stared from behind two delicately carved ovals.

He seemed human in shape, yet it had never been more clear that he wasn't. It was a strange distinction that seemed almost impossible to make, if it weren't for the coal black skin, too dark to be a human's. or the way he seemed to flow across the floor rather then walk, his limbs moving as though through water. The other creature stepped out of the vines as their ends attacked the onlookers, the creatures leaf nose moving as he sniffed the air. The auctioneer was now frozen on the ground, his mouth hanging open as he looked on.

The thinner creature; human only in form; stepped forwards to the table, lifting a long, six fingered hand. With the very tips of his fingers, he held the bejeweled piece of the crown, examining it through the eye-holes in his mask, the image of it in his impossibly long fingers reflected in the mask.

"Wink, merle da la sie Fantastic. Erle fin." The words came through the speakers in a musical voice that sounded like honey over butter, shaping each word in the foreign tongue. The great bat-nosed creature nodded once, and then crawled oddly back down onto the stage of vines. The silver masked creature who had just spoken walked dream like over to the man in the back, the grey haired one who had turned into the thing with the broken wings.

"Sae lin, Nuala. Shre oni uhn freven al sui." He said. His voice barely picked up on the equipment, he whispered to the creature, and immediately the broken winged one dropped to the ground, spreading his arms like a child begging for an embrace.

"Ki, ka Ki, al sui me! Nuala nada!" He seemed to be begging, his body shaking. The words coming from his mouth sounded like a different accent of speech, but the silver masked one seemed to understand. For a moment he stared down, and then with a powerful whip of his hand, he reached down and tore the veined remnants of one wing from the creatures thin back.

The thing screamed in agonizing pain as the severed wing twitched on the ground where it fell, the other one stretching out and quivering.

The taller one turned away, but the creature it had just harmed reached forward, gripping at a single boot. He didn't even look down as he kicked forwards, and with incredible strength flung the quivering, bleeding thing forwards through the air, flying to the circle of unfurled vines. He hit the larger one, which let out a growl as he fell, still sobbing.

The mirror masked one walked forwards as though he had done nothing, stepping down onto the platform. The vines encircled him and the huge creature, and the last one, still shaking on the ground.

The largest of the old branches reached together, twisting into one another and scraping down parts of the ceiling like paper with the sharp purple thorns. They stretched outwards as if in a sigh of ecstacy, and then crumpled, turning to ash like rock. The three figures that had been in the center however, were no longer there.


	4. BPRDouted

Disclaimer: I do not own Hellboy, the title besides the 'sort of' or even the basic plotline. The details small and large however, are mine.

There was a great pause in the room as the image stopped, vanishing into black as the freckled woman pressed another switch on the video camera.

"Holy shit." Liz finally said, breaking the resounding silence.

"Not sure if it's holy." Hellboy said back, scratching the back of his head. Manning was standing behind them, dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open an inch and a half.

Abe had vanished, leaving the group to walk quickly but silently over to the spot in the corner he had been staring at before, the exact spot where the masked figure had stood, directly next to the hole in the ground where the roots had come up. He knelt down beside it, removing a glove and placing one webbed hand on the floor.

Seeing what Abe was doing, Hellboy quickly walked over, not even trying to avoid stepping on the broken rocks on the ground.

"We've checked the place where the plants came up, they seem to have come from below the basement. We had someone dig down a bit in the ground below, but it was nothing. The roots weren't even that long." A man nearby said to Abe, not understanding his apparent facination with the floor.

"What is it, Blue?" Hellboy said, ignoring the man standing next to his friend.

Abe blinked twice, his face contorting slightly in confusion. "I'm not sure. This... well, I suppose this man... he seems to have some kind of... well, like a barrier up, inside his thoughts. As though he knew someone would try to see what he was thinking."

Manning was still staring open mouthed at the television screen, but turned at the mention of this. "What do you mean, a 'barrier?' Has that ever happened before? Are people supposed to be able to do that?"

Abe shrugged, placing his second hand on the ground with the first for a moment, bringing his face down slightly as though he were about to kiss the floor. "Anything's possible. But I don't think that was any ordinary person, Manning." He said thoughtfully, seemingly without sarcasm, lifting a hand to make a strange motion at his own face before he blinked rapidly, leaning forwards and putting both hands on the floor again.

"What is it?" Liz asked.

"I'm not sure..." Abe muttered. He had the strangest look on his face as he pressed his fingers to the ground. "It's as though... as though there was someone else inside this person's head, while they were standing here..." He said the words quietly, as though afraid that person might hear them.

"What?" Hellboy said quickly, leaning down as if by doing so, he could see the things Abe could see through the traces of emotion left on the floor.

"I don't know... I think it's a girl, but I can't get much of her mind... It's as though she were another person, with a small thread attaching her own mind to his, and... I think she's the reason he put the barrier up..."

"Abe, you're not making sense." Liz said slowly, squatting down next to him.

"What?" He said faintly, his fingers still tracing the floor as though it had a face.

"Abe!" Liz called, as though he were asleep. Abe jumped, shaking his head and quickly taking his hands up off the floor. Bits of stone from the collapsed ceiling and splinters from the floor stuck in the creases of his palms, and he stared down at them for a moment as though seeing something else.

Then he looked up at them as though nothing had happened and said matter of factly "They left something here. It's under the auctioning table, hidden by the plants wrapped around it. The Prince dropped it there when he went to pick up the piece of the crown."

There was a very long silence.

"What? Are you kidding me?" Manning suddenly said, turning around. He began to sit down on a chair and then hurriedly stood when a leaf from the vine wrapped around the back of the chair touched him. "All that crap is true? Is this some kind of punishment for complaining? If I say I'm annoyed with hiding three they give me a whole other world to hide? I mean, seriously, I still have trouble believing freaks like you exist, and now you tell me some mythical golden peoples are coming up out of the ground? It can't all exist! And what the fuck do you mean, Prince???" He said, waving his arms like a mad man.

Liz let out a sigh that sounded like a growl as Manning inadvertently slipped back into his old prejudices for a moment.

"I was able to get that. Prince. He calls himself Silverlance. I wasn't able to get much else though, like I said, a wall put up for the girl." He said curiously, reaching a hand to his forehead as he considered the information.

"Wait, so that crap the seller was spewing about that thing being all mythical was actually true?" Hellboy said. Abe glanced up at him.

"Why do you doubt that so much? Everyone knows you've seen all the mythical crap. Why are things like this so hard to believe? I've actually expected it all along." Abe said with a wave of his hand. He was taking the discovery of an ancient ledged being true completely in stride, considering the thought of it in his head as though it were simply a new food being tasted in his mouth.

"You've expected it? Expected what?" Liz said. She had a rather odd expression on her face, as though she were debating whether or not to be horrified or curious, or trying not to be horrified since she didn't want to consider herself a hypocrite.

"Oh you know, many of the mythical things. Faeries, for instance." Abe spoke calmly, with another flick of his hand.

"Faeries? Wait, Brothers Grimm or Disney?" Hellboy said, considering.

Abe stared at him rather darkly. "Most definitely Brother's Grimm Hellboy. Or at best Shakespear or Hans Christian Anderson. I honestly don't think the world of all things unexplained likes us enough to give us Tinkerbell."

"Whoa, whoa whoa." Manning said, turning around to face them. "Let's not fly off the handle here. We don't know for certain that all this crap exists."

"Yeah, well most people don't think we exist, it would make sense there's others we don't know exist." Liz said in an oddly defensive tone.

"I mean, you said you couldn't really see their minds. Maybe it's just some weirded out cult kid who _believes_ all this crap is real, which is why he came in here." Manning said to himself reassuringly.

"If a cult has the power to bring something like those two others with him to life, or even make him... well, the way he is, I think more people would want to join it, and that we'd have heard something about it before." Abe said reasonably.

"Exactly! And if there was a whole separate race of... of magic people, we would have heard something about that, that one's even more hard to hide!" Manning said rather desperately.

"But we have heard about it! That's why there's f'n legends, and why there's all these things in faerie tale books and everything! It's not that well hidden, it's just like Hellboy and how he's photographed every other day! People don't believe it even though it's right in front of them!" Liz shouted back and Manning, he teeth gritting with annoyance.

"I honestly think we can settle this much easier by seeing if there's any proof in what the Prince Silverlance... person... left here." Abe said hesitantly. "Careful, though. It's probably dangerous. He didn't seem like that good of a person."

"Oh, ya think?" Hellboy said with sarcasm dripping from his words as he walked forwards to the auctioning table, remembering the figure ripping the shredded wing from whoever his companion had been.

Before anyone could protest, Hellboy crumpled the vines beneath his stone hand, reached under the table and picked up what was under it, not at all carefully, setting it down on the place where the crown had been moments before.

"Hey, fingerprints!" A man in a white coat nearby said.

"Honestly kid, I don't think fingerprints are gonna help us this time." Hellboy said in a mock helpful voice.

"Don't worry about it." Liz said with exaggerated kindness, clearly, amongst all things, still pissed at Hellboy over their argument before.

Hellboy snorted at her, staring fixedly down on the things on the table. "Wow. What a pretty rock. Very nice of him." He said sarcastically. On the table was what looked like a grey brick, with a small handle made of rope attached to the top of it.

"Is it supposed to do something?" Liz asked after a moment of silence as they stared at the rock on the table.

"Uh... Red?" Abe asked in a questioning voice. He was standing on the other side of the table, looking down at the other side of the brick. Hellboy stepped over to him, looking down, his eyes widening for a moment.

On the other side was a circle of red, taking up about half of the tall stone, looking like a button. A deallocate design of a tree rested in the fine silver.

"Red, I don't think you should-" Abe started as Hellboy reached his fingers out to touch the circle.

But it was too late. A great buzzing filled the air suddenly, and the rock pulled itself apart like a puzzle, unfolding pieces where there had not even been a trace of a crack a moment before. The buzzing intensified, like a swarm of angry bees, and a single claw curled it's way around the opening formed on one side of the box.

Out crawled a small grey stone colored creature, black eyes glinting like drops of oil, the mouth hanging halfway open. The swollen red gums were stuffed with teeth that looked as though they had been shoved in, small teeth that looked disturbingly like those of children, tiny and pale like pearls. Ears, so large they folded inside out, hung down on the back of the head, pointed tips.

It was about as large as a human hand.

"That's it?" Hellboy asked blankly. "Ya know, somehow I expected something more..."

He didn't finish his sentence. The thing let out a horrible screeching noise that sounded like a baby shrieking, only never-ending and impossibly high pitched. The thing was suddenly joined by more screams, filling the air one by one with a horrible metal on metal screech.

It was like a grey blur of shifting stone. Creature after creature was suddenly flinging itself out of the confines of the box. The one in front of them seemed to almost smile at them, as small nearly invisible wings began flapping in a humming bird like blur, lifting the small creature into the air. The people who had been standing in the room, staring at the agents at work screamed, flinging their arms up as shields over their eyes, running for the exit.

"Oh, that's just great!" Hellboy yelled, lifting his own great stone arm to his eyes and reaching automatically down to the Samaritan at his side. Liz reached down, lifting out her own gun, turning on the spot with an eyebrow raised. She felt a tug on the back of her head and swung the gun around, hitting the thing with the back of it. Abe reached curiously into the air, grabbing one of the thousands of things dive bombing them and gripping it while still moving his other hand around in an attempt to keep them away from his eyes. He let go as the thing brandished it's claws, biting down hard on Abe's grey-blue flesh and slashing at him with the pointed nails. It hung onto him by the teeth.

"Let me help you with that." Hellboy said. The odd flying things whizzed about his head like mosquitoes, and one dove in and bit the tender flesh on his wrist as he aimed his gun at the small creature gripping Abe's hand. He winced, right before he fired, and Abe looked uncertainly at him.

"Are you sure about this?" He said.

Hellboy looked down as the things zoomed threateningly around them. One of the creatures had crawled onto his gun, it's head directly in front of the tip. It grinned up at him as though it'd stopped him from doing something. He snorted, aimed again, and fired. It was too fast to even see, the headless body dropped to the ground, a finger twitching, and Abe winced as the whatever-it-was was torn from his flesh in a hard blow.

The air was suddenly very, very still, the buzzing noise of a thousand suspended creatures' wings whirring.

Hellboy, Abe, and Liz looked up, and a thousand small vicious faces stared back. Their dead commered twitched again on the floor.

"Oh crap." Hellboy said quietly.

In a group, the creatures screamed, dive bombing as a group. They found their way into Liz's hair, one struck his claws against the small holes of Abe's ears, another one clawed into Hellboy's shirt. The swarmed in groups, slashing at eyes and sticking their sharp, pointed nails in noses. One sunk his child-like teeth into the tips of Hellboy's ear.

After a moment of hitting himself where the horrible creatures landed, the words, gradually getting louder, reached his ears. He turned, looking at his girlfriend. He face was beat red from effort, sweat standing out on her forehead. Her form looked like something through water from the waves of heat radiating off of her.

"Manning Abe get out get out get out get out GET OUT!!!" She screamed. Abe and Manning, recognizing the moment, raced across the room, not even trying to not run into the creatures in the air, and flung themselves behind a gargantuan hunk of fallen rock and shriveled black vines.

Liz let out a breath she had been holding, and out came a wave of flame. Hellboy didn't even try to move away, simply let it wash over him. He heard the sizzling pop of a few strands of thread on his shirt burning, and closed his long flame proof jacket closer around himself. Liz had a look of peace on her face he only ever saw there when she was like this, a weirdly beautiful blue beacon in the sky. Again, a strange kind of guilt came over him. That she seemed to only ever feel so at peace when she was lifted into the air a few feet like this, flame leaking from the pores in her body. It made him notice the premature lines on her eyes when he saw them go smooth in a look of calm.

And jealousy. It was so stupid that he was always jealous of fire.

The things in the air around him screeched and howled. The only problem was, they didn't seem to be burning. Their small bodies remained intact. He looked at them in slightly worried confusion. A few were quivering still, but they seemed to be learning to ignore the pain. The ones over where Abe was, where there was no fire, were diving into the flames now and hardly wincing.

"Liz!" He yelling in concern. She opened her glowing orange eyes, and the things dove at their attacker.

She screamed, flames leaping from her mouth like a dragon, the things yanking at her hair, scratching at her exposed skin. Hellboy heard a cry as well as one pierced her ear with it's long claw, digging through, it's nail covered in blood.

There was a terrible quivering of heat. Abe, who had been looking up over the edge of the rock, dove down again just in time as a wave of blue flame like never before flung itself out from Liz like a supernova. It poured over the top of the rock like mighty sprays of water.

Hellboy, in incredible shock, felt himself being lifted off the ground. He felt the glass behind him crumbling, as if going back to the sand it once was. For the first time, he actually felt the heat of the fire. He felt himself flying through the air by the force of the flame.

Liz's eyes flicked back and fourth as she stared at the broken winder, eyebrows up, worry crossing over her features. "HB!" She yelled. The fire dissipated. Behind them, the ash in the air; used to be monestrous fey; flew over towards the box it's original form had come from, before the box folded in on itself like a piece of paper, vanishing into thin air. Liz fell to the ground, but hardly noticed. Abe leapt upwards as soon as the waves of fire stopped, running forwards to the broken window Hellboy had just crashed through on the other side of the room, Manning hot on his heals.

As they looked down, relief crossed their faces for a moment. Then there was a slow "Oh..." From Abe.

Several live broadcast cameras, which had been interviewing any survivors they could find of the 'incident' were now focused on Hellboy, smiling in an awkward way as he stood up from where he had fallen directly in front of them, brushing dirt and glass off himself and waving happily.

Cameras flashed. Questions rained out. From somewhere in the audience, someone yelled "Hey, look up in the window." Half the cameras zoomed in on Abe, Liz and Manning, staring down in shock. Liz looked like she might puke. Abe lifted an awkward hand, shifting uncomfortably and waving slightly.

Manning backed away, horror coming over his features.

Writer: Well, review.


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